The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 10,427 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 A Life Less Ordinary
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5,576 out of 10427
  2. Mixed: 3,741 out of 10427
  3. Negative: 1,110 out of 10427
10427 movie reviews
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  1. The Gatekeepers
    The six men have different personalities that suggest varying styles of leadership, but what's remarkable about The Gatekeepers is how they speak in one voice about the moral complexities of their former jobs and their extreme pessimism about the future.
  2. Bullet to the Head
    The X-factors tend to be the script and the performances, and those elements largely betray him in Bullet To The Head, which is a perfunctory exercise whenever Hill isn't busying himself with gun battles, ax fights, and other mano-a-mano confrontations. He can only do so much.
  3. Warm Bodies
    For a movie about a love so powerful that it brings people back from the dead, it's curiously tepid. In spite of its repeated, overwrought image of grey, dead zombie hearts flushing and throbbing with new life, it lacks a beating heart of its own.
  4. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    The grim heroes don't have a nuance or more than a hint of emotion between them, and the same goes for the film around them.
  5. Movie 43
    The sketches aren't united by a half-ignored framing device, so much as by an enduring fascination with bodily functions. Movie 43 is the most star-studded collection of jokes involving menstruation, flatulence, incest, bestiality, Snooki, and nutsacks ever assembled, but the stars don't elevate the material-they just descend to its level.
  6. Parker
    Though Parker starts off fairly strong, the action gets more predictable as it meanders toward its conclusion.
  7. Yossi
    In its superior first half, Yossi sustains a mood of wistful longing and inexorable loneliness as its directionless protagonist lumbers through a grey, joyless existence, but the film threatens to turn into a gay Israeli version of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" once Knoller finds his impossibly gorgeous, persistent dream man.
  8. Resolution
    Benson and Moorhead have made a horror film for jaded aficionados, deconstructing and reconstructing tired elements into a gnarled, distinctive Frankenstein's monster. This monster might ransack a village, but it would have to think about it first.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Supporting Characters
    Supporting Characters tends to meander pleasantly from scene to scene, relying on the testy rapport between its two lead actors.
  10. Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
    The pleasure of Happy People comes from watching these men go about their work, while they explain that the only way to make it in the taiga is to do and take exactly what's needed, and not get greedy.
  11. The Last Stand
    It's a struggle at times, mostly because the action-movie clichés haven't been weeded out of the script, but the film is cheerfully, irresistibly destructive - an old-fashioned, "Rio Bravo" shoot-'em-up with the hicktown spirit of "Tremors," though it isn't as good as either.
  12. Mama
    Plenty of horror movies are willing to settle for making audiences jump. Mama is more ambitious by far: It makes sure viewers are emotionally committed even when they aren't clutching their armrests or covering their eyes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    As its title suggests, Satan grapples with the existence and nature of evil in the world, but it's hard to take such weighty matters seriously when they're explored with all the subtlety and grace of an anti-abortion pamphlet.
  14. LUV
    Candis and Wilson sandbag their actors with dialogue that's a mix of dull exposition and pulp clichés, and rarely natural-sounding or colorful.
  15. Broken City
    In spite of some punchy scenes, crackling dialogue, and fine performances, Broken City is hopelessly overmatched. It has Academy Award dreams, but a detective-show heart.
  16. A Haunted House
    If the sluggishly paced, virtually laugh-free Haunted House is Wayans' conception of a passion-fueled labor of love, it's horrifying to ponder what he'd consider a mercenary cash-grab.
  17. My Best Enemy
    The result is a movie largely devoid of attitude or suspense. My Best Enemy is brisk and eventful, but after a while, it begins to seem like Murnberger is rushing through this material, afraid to dwell too long on any one situation, lest it tip too far into exploitation.
  18. Fairhaven
    Fairhaven's location is lovely. Its actors are terrific. All of them beg for something better.
  19. Struck by Lightning
    Lightning is a funny, fast-moving movie, packed with barbed one-liners, goofy hyperbole, and all the oversized exasperation of teen angst. But it's too acid, particularly where Colfer is concerned.
  20. Quartet
    Quartet falls into the common actor-turned-director trap of valuing the performances of fellow actors over all other aesthetic concerns.
  21. Gangster Squad
    Gangster Squad aims for the pop-operatic intensity of "The Untouchables," but ends up feeling like a savage, simple-minded comic strip.
  22. John Dies at the End
    It's a mess, but its best moments are exhilarating, getting hopelessly lost in Pargin's surreal, completely disorienting world.
  23. I Am Not a Hipster
    It succeeds at times in spite of itself, though it ultimately adds up to less than the sum of its sometimes impressive, sometimes insufferable parts.
  24. Texas Chainsaw 3D
    The mere presence of a second layer to the story gives Texas Chainsaw 3D an intriguing kick, and it adds a couple moments of visual wit that show a willingness to fiddle around with the genre. Not being irredeemable garbage counts as a modest achievement, but it's a small step in the right direction.
  25. 56 Up
    However crafted their stories may have become, and however reluctantly they participate, their sacrifice will be appreciated by history, and by the next generation of voyeurs as well.
  26. Tabu
    Like other great pastiche artists, Gomes has created a time machine to a cinematic era that never quite existed, so it feels simultaneously borrowed and new.
  27. Promised Land
    No one seems to recognize the irony of making a film about corporate rigging that is itself outrageously rigged.
  28. West of Memphis
    On its own merits, though, West Of Memphis is a well-assembled, well-argued documentary that shows how America's advocacy model of trial law can lead to government representatives spinning stories they know are probably untrue, then using their authority to stand strong against any alternate theory, no matter how many millions of people believe it.
  29. Parental Guidance
    Parental Guidance is the abysmal grandpa/grandkids bonding comedy he's (Crystal) been destined to make since he first started creating new comedy with an unmistakable old-person smell.
  30. Django Unchained
    Tarantino simply isn't a good enough performer for his presence to be anything but a distraction in a rip-roaring crowd-pleaser this consistently great.
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